Leighton, I really loved the sunrise photo., esp the colors are great contrast to the snowy foreground.

Ken, I have always loved long exposures. Esp with all those lighting., nice shot.

Ron, nice shots of the birds. Cardinal has always been my fav.

Phillippe, Nice shot of the bridge. Symmetry is always interesting to capture.

Frank, Nice colours esp Loved the Red flower.

George, the loco photo is amazing.. There is a train running close to my house which I want to stop and take photo.. I will try it sometime next week and show results here.

I have not taken any photos today.. but I wanted to share two of my best Red Cardinal photos I had taken last year using the 400mm f3.5 AI. It is definitely the most loved lens in my shelf.

These are taken on my D7000 which got replaced by the D600. The first photo was taken during the evening when it was getting dark and I had the bushes as cover. I shot it in RAW then double processed the file, one for the bird exposure (for sharpness and detail) and second for the background (noise removal and blurness) and then merged them as layers using photoshop.

The second photo was taken from my car during day time and was able to get really close.

Thanks for the warm welcome everyone (far too many to thank each of you personally). With the many and varied locations of the posters, there is always new "stuff" to read and see on this thread, which makes it very enticing. I've noticed at least one other "Aussie" commenting frequently, but are there more? The reason I ask, is that I'm interested in adding to my kit and it would be far easier to buy lenses from here in Australia than from the US. Any thoughts or experiences on this topic would be appreciated. I'm also quite amazed at the quality of the images from the 400mm manual focus lens - a tribute to the photographer(s) I'm sure. I use an AFS 300mm f4 with 1.4x TC for birding, and can't imagine not having auto focus for rapidly moving subjects. For that reason, I'll stick to landscapes etc... and other subjects that don't move.... like these.

Thank you Leighton, Jose, Scott and those who have liked. Me and my wife went to Tropical Park, Miami and had a nice walk. We also stopped by to watch this local baseball league match.
I had my D600 + 180mm f2.8 AIS. I think I was shooting 1/250 - 1/320sec at Auto ISO 6400., f2.8 the whole time.
I dont know if there is a certain etiquette as to how many photos I can post in one post. But here are my favorites._DSC2997 by ramkumar999, on Flickr

Very nice Jose... wickedly sharp images with very sweet bokeh. I imagine that bugs attract you primarily as food for the birds you love so much. Here is a bird predator...

Shot with the 50 f/2 H.C. AI'd that remains on my camera past the March 1 date Peter selected for his challenge. I'll soon switch lenses but one more outing didn't hurt.

This is the largest cat I've ever met, a Norwegian Forest Cat with long lens and a large, lean body. I was visiting his owner's home and couldn't resist taking a few shots. This is wide open against a bright window...

I am a cat fancier but it doesn't sit well with me that they kills so many birds. I'm sure you know this but it still is shocking when you read about their behavior. Here is a link to an article that says birds kill a BILLION birds each year in the United States...

Thanks for the kind words Raoof! I appreciate you taking the time to view my flickr page. I see many people have posted their images on this forum from flickr, but I'm not sure how to do that yet.... any advice on the best method of uploading images to this thread would be appreciated.

Ram, excellent timing on your Baseball-shots! The cardinal-portraits are great as well.

Jose, you've captured the Cicada in a fantastic fashion. Love especially the first shot. The diagonal framing works great and colors/sharpness are spot on.

Buddy, congrats to your new 135/3.5Q! Really nice work again with the superfast 55 and the 105/2.5!

Curtis, love your high-key-portrait of that majestic looking Norwegian Cat.
Many house-cats I see over here are way to fat to catch a living bird. And if they would eventually catch a bird they would have no clue what to do with it - as their meals are coming out of tin-cans. Sorry for my blather.

David, really nice shots from the Australian beaches. David, we have 3 (more or less regular) contributors from Down Under here: Sar ("4mpx"), Ben ("bruni") and Andy ("cadman342001"). Maybe the Aussie-group can share their favorite way to get those fine MF-Nikkor's.

I see many people have posted their images on this forum from flickr, but I'm not sure how to do that yet.... any advice on the best method of uploading images to this thread would be appreciated.

Davidlsds wrote:
@David: I usually take the medium resolution and either copy the BB code or else open the image in a new window and copy the path in the browser to the Message box..Cheers
lestordhamments wrote:
Thanks Lestor! Let's give it a go..... here's a cut and paste of the path to a flickr image:

Not sure what a BB code is, but after posting, I see that the link above works, but I wanted to embed the image in my post.... HELP!

Cheers, David

David, there should be a small logo (a box with an arrow coming out of it) at the right side underneath your flickr-image.
Click on it and a menu should open. Just make sure "BB-Code" is checked, choose a size (about 1000 pixels is a good choice for most pictures) and copy the lines from the box above.
Insert it here, right into your text and the image should appear, together with a link to your flickr-stream and a direct link to the shared image.
Sorry for my English, Georg.

Not sure what a BB code is, but after posting, I see that the link above works, but I wanted to embed the image in my post.... HELP!

Cheers, David

Hi David,

Open a single image, and at the bottom right you'll see a funny little icon with an arrow coming out of a box. Once you click that a window will pop up giving you sharing options. Make sure you have the box at the bottom that says BBCode clicked. Then choose the size in which you want to dislay the image using the drop-down menu. I always choose large for my landscapes and medium 800 for my portraits. Then copy and paste the info in the little box. Hope this helps.

georgms wrote:
Ram, excellent timing on your Baseball-shots! The cardinal-portraits are great as well.

Jose, you've captured the Cicada in a fantastic fashion. Love especially the first shot. The diagonal framing works great and colors/sharpness are spot on.

Buddy, congrats to your new 135/3.5Q! Really nice work again with the superfast 55 and the 105/2.5!

Curtis, love your high-key-portrait of that majestic looking Norwegian Cat.
Many house-cats I see over here are way to fat to catch a living bird. And if they would eventually catch a bird they would have no clue what to do with it - as their meals are coming out of tin-cans. Sorry for my blather.

David, really nice shots from the Australian beaches. David, we have 3 (more or less regular) contributors from Down Under here: Sar ("4mpx"), Ben ("bruni") and Andy ("cadman342001"). Maybe the Aussie-group can share their favorite way to get those fine MF-Nikkor's.

Frank, welcome back and thanks for sharing some Italian colors!...Show more →

Georg, thank you for saying everything I would have said to these guys. It allows me to be lazy and give a +1.

Thanks for the comments on the railroad man, really much appreciated! It's one of my better fisheye-portraits, wish I had more time to shoot portraits like this with more attention to details (had to crop out my camera bag at the corner bottom right ).
And thanks for the kind words on the soccer-/football-attempts with the 400/3.5 - will eventually try my dusty D2H with the 400/3.5. The - compared to the D7k - better finder and faster frame-rate should slightly increase my rate of keepers.